Hurramabad is written by a storyteller with a profound knowledge of the Muslim world. He observed with his own eyes during the tragic 1990s the atrocities of the Tajik civil war and the genocide of the ethnic Russians there, the nefarious influence of neighboring Afghan war lords and the huge drug trade taking place with the tacit benediction of the Russian authorities and military commanders… Being a Russian intellectual with first hand experience of Islamic fanaticism in action, he understands its inner mechanism and mentality. And he remains impartial in the conflict between the Tajiks and the Russians, knowing that cruelty and insanity are shared by both sides. He tells us memorable stories of a lone old woman who makes friends with a rattle snake and a teenager whose mixed Tajik-Russian family is a microcosm of the war itself. Writing about war and terrorism, he is extremely relevant, all the more so now that the world has gone through the tragedies of the Balkans, Nine Eleven and the hostage drama at the Beslan school. Andrey Volos is possibly the only modern writer able to narrate the psycho-sociologic substrata that lie at the grass-roots of these problems in highly emotional and poetic language.

Hurramabad won a major Russian NATIONAL LITERARY Award. The book has been very well received and praised by critics as one of the best examples of tragic and at the same time analytical prose at the end of the twentieth century.

"One of the best books to come out of Russia in the last decade..." (Neue Zuricher Zeitung)

"Where is Tajikistan? Is it far away? Not at all. Volos writes so visually of this former Soviet republic as if it were around the corner." (Tages Anzeiger)

"Volos narrows the perspective of his narrative to the emotional experience of a few eye-witnesses and so creates an extraordinarily vivid and multifaceted atmosphere. This is the city of Hurramabad shimmering in the heat, the hurly-burly of the bazaars, in little side streets and in the habitations of Tajik shepherds. The growing suspense of Hurramabad will be felt even by readers who have not a slightest interest in this Central Asian country." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

"The focused chaos in Hurramabad reveals a quantity of open wounds which will never heal."(Berliner Zeitung)